Who’s Responsible For The Tone Of The Health Care Debate?

This is partially in response to a post over at Poligazette that suggests the Baucus bill doesn’t represent bipartisan compromise and the lion’s share of blame shouldn’t fall on Republicans to accept it. In fact, Jason Arvak states that the tenor of this debate (which he claims liberals are equally responsible for) is the real reason why compromise can’t be reached.

Obviously I disagree with that for many reasons, but I especially don’t think that the left blogosphere has driven the debate. Especially since nearly ALL of the coverage about workable health care legislation has been on the Baucus bill. If the left blogosphere was driving the debate, there wouldn’t be such a focus on this bill…which they hate.

However, my point in a previous post is that if Repubs don’t want to come to the table for legislation that’s a genuine attempt at bipartisanship, well, they probably never wanted to play ball in the first place. At least not play ball as the minority party, which brings with it the reality that the legislation is going to be written by the opposition and include a fair share of their ideas.

And I’ll repeat again what I said over there…the Baucus bill has ZERO publicly run options, the CBO says it’ll reduce the budget deficit, has a clause to allow these new privately run, not-for-profit co-ops the chance to phase out and no employer mandates. These are all things that Republicans said they wanted, but now they’re calling the bill purely partisan?

Yeah right…

Here’s more from Wash Post:

Within minutes of the release of the Senate Finance Committee chairman’s long-awaited health-care reform bill Wednesday, the attacks started flying. Liberal Democrats and allies, particularly labor unions, fumed. Republicans, after being courted for months, denounced the work as pure partisanship.

But behind the rhetorical fireworks was a sense that the fragile coalition of major industry leaders and interest groups central to refashioning the nation’s $2.5 trillion health-care system remains intact. As they scoured the 223-page document, many of the most influential players found elements to dislike, but not necessarily reasons to kill the effort. Most enticing was the prospect of 30 million new customers.

Folks, this is the best Republicans can hope for. If they don’t like it, fine, but what do they want? What does realistic compromise look like to them? I have NO idea and neither does anybody in the moderate Republicans blogosphere…which should tell you all you need to know. Sure, the tenor of bloggers could be better, but that isn’t making Republicans not accept this legislation.

Meanwhile, all the signs point to Obama getting behind this…

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), who is upset that Baucus did not include a public health insurance option, tempered his criticism after a private meeting with Obama, signaling that he hopes to work out a compromise.

“Nothing is clearer than the president’s commitment to providing affordable and effective health care for all Americans, and he and I are united in our efforts to deliver on this promise,” he said.

Long story short, it seems as if Obama doesn’t care if a “public” option is run by the government or not. That’s heartening to me because that’s the type of compromise Republicans should be excited about. But they’re not. Again…why?

Do know that I think it’s fair to point out that agreeing to this legislation may not be politically smart for Republicans, but they shouldn’t have strung Baucus along and feigned interest for compromise. That’s why I blamed Republicans for walking away…because Baucus (and the President by extension) has come towards them quite a bit when they could have just passed something with a 1 vote majority and been done with it.

Here’s the question: Do you think the right or the left is more responsible for the tenor of the health care debate?

(Photo: Getty via Daylife)